It wasn't that he couldn't sleep alone. It was that he'd grown used to sleeping with Eudora beside him.

Even on nights they didn't touch, all he needed was to reach over and feel the warmth of her body, and something in him would settle.

“Gavin, are you……thinking about Eudora?”

Lauren's voice was careful, testing.

Gavin cut into his steak without looking up, his expression cold.

“Why would I think about her? Ungrateful wretch I never should've fed.”

“It's just……I found this in the back of the closet.”

Lauren held out a crumpled sheet of paper.

A lab report from the hospital.

Gavin took it, glanced down with casual disinterest, and his pupils contracted sharply.

“Pregnancy test positive……”

The date was……a month ago?

That day she'd said she wanted to have a baby. He'd assumed she was scheming, and he'd humiliated her for it.

She was already pregnant then?

His hand began to shake. His wine glass tipped, and dark red pooled across the white tablecloth like a stain that looked too much like blood.

“She's pregnant……”

The words left him barely above a whisper. Eudora's face flashed through his mind, pale as it had been that day, and then that final resolute look in her eyes.

“I want your seed. But I don't want you anymore.”

The words looped through his skull like a curse.

He'd always believed she'd said it out of anger.

She'd meant every word.

She had taken his child and run.

“Get the car. The care facility. Now!”

He shoved back from the table, the chair shrieking across the floor.

If she was going to leave, she'd take her sickly grandmother with her. Find the grandmother, find her.

The room at the care facility was already empty.

“Stella Henson? She was transferred out two weeks ago.”

The nurse scrolled through the records.

“It looks like she was moved to……I'm sorry, the family requested confidentiality.”

Gavin stood in the middle of the empty room, and it felt like every drop of blood in his body was running the wrong way.

She had planned all of this. Every step, him included, and then she'd walked away without a trace.

“Eudora Henson……”

He ground her name between his teeth, and the panic rising in his chest finally drowned out the anger.

He couldn't find her.

The woman who had always come when called, who had always stood exactly half a step behind him, had vanished from his world completely.

“President Delgado, we found something!”

His assistant rushed in, sweat beading across his forehead.

“A property under Connor Harding's name, there's been recent power usage, and……someone spotted a woman matching Ms. Henson's description nearby.”

“Where?”

“Seabrook. A seaside village.”

Gavin was out the door before the sentence ended.

Eudora Henson, when I get my hands on you, I'll break your legs.

He was vicious in his head, but his trembling fingers gave him away.

He was afraid.

Afraid that she truly didn't want him anymore.

Seabrook—the sea breeze tasting faintly of salt.

I'd rented a little courtyard house by the shore. Sun on my skin every morning, flowers to tend, days that unfolded slow and easy.

My belly had started to round. Connor found me a dependable auntie to handle meals and keep the house running, and every weekend he flew down himself, arms loaded with supplements and baby things.

“How's this rocking horse look? Gotta have something for my future godson to ride.”

Connor crouched in the courtyard assembling it, sweat beading across his forehead.

I sat in the rocking chair and watched him, smiling.

“How do you know it's a boy? What if it's a girl?”

“Even better! A girl who looks like you. Beautiful.”

Connor lifted his head, and sunlight spilled across his face—bright enough to make me squint.

The wooden gate to the yard was kicked open.

The crash jolted through me and the book slipped from my fingers, hitting the ground.

Gavin stood in the doorway, radiating hostility. His eyes were webbed with red, his suit wrinkled beyond recognition, every trace of his usual composure gone.

His gaze locked onto me and Connor, then dropped to the slight swell of my belly.

“Eudora.”

His voice was raw, scraped down to gravel.

“So this is where you've been hiding.”

Connor shot to his feet and stepped in front of me, guarded.

“Gavin. What are you doing here? You're not welcome.”

“Get out of my way.”

Gavin shoved Connor aside and strode toward me.

After the first jolt of panic, I steadied myself quickly.

This was always going to happen.

I gripped the armrest of the rocking chair and stood, meeting his eyes calmly.

“President Delgado graces us with his presence. To what do I owe the honor?”

He stopped a few steps away. His gaze traced my face, hungry, lingering on my brows and eyes before fixing on my stomach.

“The baby's mine?”

“No.”

I didn't hesitate.

“It's Connor's.”

Something fractured behind his eyes. He grabbed my shoulders so hard I winced.

“You're lying! A month ago you were still in my bed! How could it be his?”

“You have such a short memory, President Delgado.”

I let out a cold laugh.

“I said I wanted a child. You told me I wasn't worthy.”

“You wouldn't give me one, so I went to someone who would.”

“Connor doesn't look down on where I come from. He's happy to step up as the father—why wouldn't I let him?”

“Shut up!”

Gavin's eyes were blood-red, a cornered animal lashing out.

“Get rid of it. Come back with me.”

“On what grounds?”

I shook his hands off.

“Gavin, we're done. Who I have a child with is none of your business.”

“Eudora! Don't push me!”

He ground the words through his teeth.

“I can make the Harding family disappear from Kingsford by tomorrow. Believe that?”

“You wouldn't dare!”

Connor charged forward and drove his fist into Gavin's face.

Gavin staggered back, blood threading from the corner of his mouth.

But he didn't so much as glance at Connor. His eyes stayed locked on me, and in them flickered something I had never seen before……pleading?

“Eudora, stop this. Come home with me.”

“The baby……if you insist on having it, fine. But it's mine. It has to be mine.”

The irony nearly choked me.

Everything I'd begged for and been denied, he was now offering up freely, now that I no longer wanted any of it.

“Too late, Gavin.”

I looked him in the eye and said, word by word：

“I don't love you anymore.”